Mid-day on 10th October saw us in Tana Airport for the flight back to South Africa. I wasn’t feeling too good. I had struggled around the lake birding in the morning & as the day progressed, I got progressively worse. I tried to sleep as much as possible on the flight but was feeling terrible when we landed.
Delana wanted me to go straight to casualty in Pretoria Hospital, but quite perversely I was too ill to be prodded & poked. I just needed to get some sleep & see what the morning would bring. I had a reasonable night but was still feeling bad in the morning, so off we trundled to Montana Hospital & spent the next five hours undergoing tests & eventually I had a CT scan, which revealed a massive kidney stone.
The doctor said it was far too large to be passed & that it was pressing both my kidney & my bladder, hence the passing of blood in the last few days! I was then booked in for emergency surgery that evening.
The surgery went fine & they placed a stent in there to widen the tube before repeatedly blasting the kidney stone with a laser. The surgeon said this worked although I would be passing fragments in the coming days, which would be both painful & debilitating. After coming out of surgery I made a quick call to Delana before taking a sleeping pill, which worked well.
I woke up early with a bit of post-op pain but not too bad. Had some fruit for breakfast (my first food for several days) then armed with a phalanx of medication I was discharged & Delana picked me up. I certainly felt a lot better than the days previously but still wasn’t great.
Got my head down in the afternoon & then it was on to
the airport with Anelle & Lourens for our flight to Cairo. It was an
overnight flight with a connection to Sharm-El Sheikh. Everything went
reasonably well & we arrived at our accommodation the Happy Valley Resort
mid-afternoon.
The place is a bit shabby & run-down but
OK. It was to be our home for the next five nights. However, the girls were
here for the snorkeling & this proved to be quite good. The surrounding
area is arid, with the mountains coming right down to the sea. The resort
gardens are well cared for, but the greenery is quite small. I managed to see a
few migrants over the coming days, as they have nowhere else to go. So, we
settled into a routine, the girls snorkeling morning & afternoon. I wasn’t
feeling great, so I lounged around in the room reading, with just some casual
birding outside. However, I did manage to spot some nice species.
Best birds: Montagues' Harrier; Common Kestrel; Namaqua Dove; Eurasian Wryneck; Eurasian Hoopoe; Red-backed Shrike; Masked Shrike; Hooded Wheatear; White-crowned Black Wheatear; Common Chiffchaff; Willow Warbler; Lesser Whitethroat; Spotted Flycatcher; Western Yellow Wagtail & White Wagtail.
Delana & Anelle snorkeled both in the morning & afternoon. They said the snorkeling was quite good & the following is just a few of what they saw.
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